1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image processing apparatus and a method for controlling provisional reservation.
2. Description of the Related Art
Technologies for reserving printers in a state where no job occurs in order to rapidly produce desired printout are known (for example, refer to Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2000-242460).
According to the technology disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2000-242460, a user can set a reservation time for a print device regardless of the presence of jobs. Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2000-242460 also discloses processing of jobs by priority within a reservation time and a method of selecting a document after a reservation time is set for a print device.
In addition, methods of preventing interruption of jobs to observe print orders are known (for example, refer to Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2005-174122). According to the method disclosed Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2005-174122, the interruption of jobs can be prevented to observe a print order by performing grouping of multiple jobs and managing the jobs as job groups.
Printing over a network has a problem in that leak of information can occur because of printouts that are left. Accordingly, printing systems are desired in which printouts are certainly acquired by users who have instructed the printing.
One solution to the above problem is a printing system called a pull print system. In the pull print system, clients upload print data to servers and actual print instructions are submitted with print devices. Accordingly, the pull print system has the advantage of suppression of printouts that are left by users.
However, large-scale pull print systems have challenges to the interruption of jobs and the print order.
Since a lager number of jobs is processed in the large-scale pull print systems, the load on the servers is possibly increased. As a result, it takes long time to perform server processing after users submit pull print instructions before print scheduling instructions are transmitted to print devices and, therefore, the processing can be interrupted by other jobs for printing. In such cases, the other jobs are first printed despite the fact that the users search for free devices to perform the pull printing, thus offsetting the advantages of the pull printing.
Cluster configuration in which load balancing between multiple servers is performed is generally adopted in the large-scale pull print systems. Accordingly, even if pull print instructions from users are received with one print device, the same processing path is not necessarily followed. Since higher-load processing paths or lower-load processing paths exist depending on the processing situations in the servers, the print order can be changed after the pull print instructions are received before the print scheduling instructions are transmitted to print devices and the print order may not be observed.
In the prevention of the interruption of jobs by the method disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2000-2424460, priority is given to the jobs of reservers within reserved time periods and other jobs can be interrupted and divided. In addition, it is necessary for users to set the reservation times of printers before performing the pull printing. Furthermore, prolonging the reservation times can occupy the printers for long times to reduce the convenience of other users.
With the method disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2005-174122, managing multiple continuous jobs as group jobs can prevent interruption of other jobs into the multiple jobs and allows the print order of the grouped jobs to be observed. However, it is not possible to resolve the problems of the interruption of jobs and the print order, which are described above as challenges and which are caused by the fact that it takes long time to perform the processing after users submit the pull print instructions before the print scheduling instructions are transmitted to print devices.